Hospital Chaplain Helps People Connect With God And Hope

When Life Puts Patients And Families In Trying Situations, Rev. Ellen Swinford Reaches Out To Them.

January 12, 2001|By Sandra Del Re. Special to the Tribune.

As Rev. Ellen Swinford walked down the hospital corridor, she prepared herself for her serious task--to comfort a man who had just lost his wife in a car crash.

To make matters worse, his young daughter was barely clinging to life and his two other children also were hurt in the collision.

Swinford, a hospital chaplain, immediately began doing what she does best--providing support, often to complete strangers, and listening to those who have lost someone close to them.

"It was one of the most wrenching experiences," said Swinford, 40, of Des Plaines. "The man had lost his wife in the blink of an eye. He was a widower with three children."

After talking with the man and his family, Swinford faced another unpleasant task: helping to break the news to the deceased woman's mother. Then in the midst of it all, the family learned that the daughter was brain-dead, and they had to make the painful decision about organ donation.

"When something like this happens, coping mechanisms are overwhelmed," said Swinford, who has been a hospital chaplain since 1989 and currently works at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights. "I'm there to help people regain control over the issues they can. I ask if there's people they need to call. I ask if they need to eat. I stress they should take care of themselves."

Hospital chaplains like Swinford have a special role to play in treating not only sick people but also their families and friends.

They are part of the health-care team, making rounds just like doctors, and are available 24 hours a day, according to the non-profit Placentia, Calif.-based Hospital Chaplains' Ministry of America.

But because a hospital chaplain is not a conventional member of the health-care team or patient's family, the chaplain can objectively provide crisis intervention counseling and support, officials of the chaplains group said.

"Our main goal is to see that pastoral care is provided and people have a chance to engage the spirit," said Dean Hokel, pastoral services consultant at Northwest Community Hospital. "I believe there's a mind-body connection. So the spirit can matter. For example, when I see heart bypass patients, I ask them, `What else is breaking your heart?' They always know."

One of the challenges facing hospital chaplains is that the people they minister to may be of a different faith. So Swinford said she must minister to them in a way they find useful.

"We are not here to try and get people to take our point of view," said Swinford, a Unitarian Universalist who was trained at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. "We are here to support people and help them use their own religious resources."

"Part of what I'm here for is to help people put things in a different frame so they can connect to hope," said Swinford, whose office table holds, among other things, a bodhisattva--an enlightened being in the Buddhist religion--and a photo of a Celtic Jesus.

It is also the hospital chaplain's job to serve as an in-house pastor for staff and as liaison for clergy.

Some chaplains even conduct workshops on topics such as terminal illness and the grieving process.